Lets ID this cannonball safe.

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After an exhaustive search I finally found another National safe that is the same. From an Ebay auction back in 2012 only one image has been recovered so far, a side image, it is an exact match. I have been in contact with the lock shop that sold it and they are looking for the original pictures. While I couldn’t come up with much on National Safe there are some examples of the tradition square safes, but very little on their cannonball or other bank safes.



I now have the safe home and took a closer look at its construction and lock. The castings of the body and base are of high quality. Much better than my Victor cannonball or Mosler screw doors. It seems to be a very well made safe.





The Yale lock and time lock are a little different setup and hope some of you can tell more about it. On my other rotating door bank safes the combination lock (day lock) controls the movement of the door on the front of the door. The time lock controls separate locking action to secure the door on the inside. On this National, the dial is recessed into the door and the spindle passes through to the lock case on the back side of the door. The spindle gear drives the wheel pack (4 wheels) which then drives another gear on the fence similar to a friction fence model but the fence is spring operated. The lock needed a severe cleaning as it looked like it was lubed with axle grease.. The lock bolt directly moves the 4 door bolts through linkage. This National is probably not as secure as others because of the spindle hole to the inside.
The time lock only disables the combination lock when the snubber bar moves and allows a pivoting lever to lock the fence action. Can anyone shed some light on this setup? Here it is with the time lock in both positions.






I was pleased to find that the original carpets were intact. I didn’t know what to expect inside as the lady who was selling it had it stuffed full when I looked at it. A close inspection of the inside turned up some goodies. Under the lower carpet were 3 paper clips, a petrified rubber band, 2 bent wire things, 2 quarters 1972 & 1979, a 1899 dime, and a 1906 Indian head penny. Wedged in a corner space of the upper shelf was a time lock winding key and a very rare original key for the Yale time lock door. Always fun to find something.